ABSTRACT

Research question

News about celebrity athlete transgressions is nearly an everyday occurrence in today’s media channels. Whether the public stigmatizes these individuals as a result of these indiscretions and how this process is enacted is not yet evident in the literature. This paper seeks to answer the question of whether and how the psychological process of stigma formation occurs with regard to celebrity athletes who transgress. Further, the paper also seeks to clarify the impact of this stigmatization in the context of sponsorship and celebrity endorsement.

Research methods

A total of 219 US residents who were recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk participated in this experimental study. We employed structural equation modeling to test our hypotheses.

Results and findings

The results show that the impact of negative moral emotions on stigma formation for transgressed athletes is partially mediated by internal attribution. Moreover, negative moral emotions and stigmas have a direct positive (negative) impact on moral coupling (moral decoupling and rationalization), and ultimately influence the attitude toward the transgressed athlete and sponsored brand.

Implications

The findings suggest that brand managers should consider the transgression history as a key determinant for endorsement decisions because sport consumers may have already formed a strong perception of stigma toward those athletes and those perceptions in turn determine the overall evaluations of endorsed athletes and sponsored brands.

中文翻译：

---

红字：道德情绪和归因类型对运动员污名化的影响

摘要

研究问题

在当今的媒体渠道中，有关名人运动员违法行为的新闻几乎每天都在发生。公众是否因这些轻率行为而污名化这些人，以及这一过程是如何实施的，在文献中尚不清楚。本文旨在回答关于违规的名人运动员是否以及如何发生耻辱形成的心理过程的问题。此外，本文还试图阐明这种污名化在赞助和名人代言方面的影响。

研究方法

共有 219 名从 Amazon Mechanical Turk 招募的美国居民参与了这项实验研究。我们采用结构方程模型来检验我们的假设。

结果和发现

结果表明，负面道德情绪对违规运动员耻辱感形成的影响部分由内部归因介导。此外，消极的道德情绪和耻辱对道德耦合（道德脱钩和合理化）有直接的积极（消极）影响，并最终影响对违规运动员和赞助品牌的态度。

启示

研究结果表明，品牌经理应将违规历史视为代言决策的关键决定因素，因为体育消费者可能已经形成了对这些运动员的强烈污名化认知，而这些认知反过来又决定了对代言运动员和赞助品牌的整体评价。